When the Baldwin Pops take the stage at Fairhope’s Henry George Park each Fourth of July, roughly 75 volunteer musicians do something no one else at the celebration does: they sit with their backs to Mobile Bay and their eyes on sheet music while fireworks crackle behind them. For nearly three decades, this community band has provided the symphonic soundtrack for Fairhope’s biggest night — and its members measure success in how precisely the final march lands against the last shell.
A band of volunteers
The Baldwin Pops formed in 1998 and draws its players from every walk of Baldwin County life: teenagers sitting beside seniors, band directors beside engineers, trained orchestral players beside musicians who pulled instruments out of closets after twenty-five years. Clarinetist Anne Brooks, an interior designer and artist, has played with the group since its first performance and is one of seven charter members still on the roster.
“We have professionals who have played in orchestras and band directors who are trained music educators,” Brooks says, “and we have others who have just knocked the dust off their instruments after not playing for 25 years.” The mix works because the group’s purpose is communal: everyone is a volunteer, and everyone is there because the music demands it.
Wayne Fillingim’s baton
Conductor and music director Wayne Fillingim, a trained saxophonist and longtime high school band director, leads the ensemble with a line of succession behind him: two of the band’s earlier conductors, co-founders Joe Riemer and Steve Sims, were Fillingim’s own high school band directors. He joined the Pops in 2014 on alto sax before moving to the podium, and he runs rehearsals in the building on Nichols Street that houses the Church of the Redeemer and the Baldwin County Youth Orchestra.
His standard is demanding but collegial. “It’s more rigid than people might think,” Fillingim says, “but as a group, I think they respect the fact that I want the very best out of them.” The repertoire backs him up — patriotic standards, show tunes, classical and jazz selections, pop, folk, and movie themes, arranged with the kind of difficulty a community band only attempts when its players are serious.
The fireworks countdown
The band’s holiday assignment is more technical than it sounds. Before the fireworks launch, the Pops perform from 7 p.m. for a crowd of thousands, then, after nightfall, supply nearly twenty minutes of continuous marches — Sousa-style pieces chosen because marches never pause, giving the pyrotechnics an unbroken soundtrack. For the players, that absence of rests is exactly what makes the music so demanding.
The finale is a timing problem. Fillingim knows the display runs roughly nineteen minutes, so he watches the sky and a phone timer simultaneously. When three or four minutes remain, the band starts John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the conductor — the only person on the bandstand with a clear view of the fireworks — adjusts tempo on the fly, stretching or repeating passages so the final chord lands just after the last blast. “Two years ago, we were right on the money,” he says. “Last year we were a few seconds off. It was so close.” When it lands perfectly, the musicians are the loudest people cheering on the bluff.
Ten performances a year
The Independence Day concert at Henry George Park draws the band’s biggest audience by far, but it is one of roughly ten public performances the Baldwin Pops stages annually, including free concerts in Fairhope, Foley, and other Baldwin County venues through the year. The group is a fixture of the county’s cultural calendar, and its July 4 slot — with the city’s fireworks over Mobile Bay — remains its signature engagement.
The work behind it is invisible by design: a series of rehearsals tightening complex arrangements, players arranging vacation around performances, and a conductor timing marches to the second against explosives. “As cliché as it sounds, we like playing our instruments for a crowd,” Fillingim says. On the first Thursday of next July, the crowd of thousands will hear the result — and a few of the players, sneaking a glance at their music-stand reflections, will catch a chandelier of color falling over the bay.